3 Things in March 2025

This month¹: I get certified, then I mail it in, and tell you how to hit the road, Jack.

In mid-February, I spent 3 days at Glen Eden ski area ^{2 3} and at the end I became a certified ski instructor (Level 1). It is something I have been thinking of, and talking about, for years. When I retired, I ran out of procrastination excuses so I signed up and. together with 12 other like-minded skiers^{4 5}, earned my first certification^{6 7}.

I have no plans to actually do any instructing, but I would make an exception for friends and family. If you want to be my first learn-to-ski victim student, let me know. My fees would be very reasonable 😉

Mail Art

If you paint or draw something and then put enough stamps on it⁸, you can mail it anywhere in the world. You would then have created some “mail art”, which is an actual thing. There is a good Wikipedia description of the history of mail or correspondence art, and here are some of my favourites⁹.

I think there are two particularly interesting things about this type of art.

First, something becomes “mail art”, as opposed to some other type of art, when it is dropped in a mailbox¹⁰. However, when you send something in the mail the law says that it becomes the property of the recipient¹¹. So the same action you take to create mail art, simultaneously results in it not being yours any more. There is something spiritual about making something by giving it away, don’t you think.

The second thing is that exhibitions of mail art are, for the most part, completely open and not-juried. So if you make the effort to submit something it will be included in the exhibition.

This month’s third thing

Here is list of travel “hacks” or tips or advice that someone¹² has compiled based on years of experience. There are many intriguing suggestions that would be worth trying.

50 Years of Travel Tips

For example….

• For the best travel experiences you need either a lot of money, or a lot of time. Of the two modes, it is far better to have more time than money.
• When asking someone for a restaurant recommendation, don’t ask them where is a good place you should eat; ask them where they eat.
• The hard-to-accept truth is that it is far better to spend more time in a few places than a little time in a bunch of places.
• If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother.

There is lots more.

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1. The bonus/header picture this month is Blackcomb mountain, taken from the Flute summit in Whistler. ↩︎
2. It’s a crappy local ski area that is absolutely perfect for learning how to ski (or snowboard). Years ago, one of the instructors told me it was like McDonalds…”billions and billions served”. An exaggeration, obviously, but you get the point. ↩︎
3. Where Andrew and Colin learned to ski 25 years ago, or so. ↩︎
4. Of the 13 candidates, 11 were ethnically Chinese; which I thought was interesting. It turns out that this is fairly typical. In Ontario, the fastest growing skiing population is Chinese, followed by Indian. ↩︎
5. I was the oldest in the group, but not by as wide a margin as I expected: The youngest was in high school, most were young adults and there was one other pensioner. ↩︎
6. There are 4 levels, and the difficulty increases exponentially. So I still have a long way to go. ↩︎
7. This footnote is for skiing nerds only. You have been warned! The CSIA ski instructor was excellent, but going through the training made me realize that there are important skiing skills they don’t teach
   (1) Chair lift etiquette (don’t wait for friends inside the corral: check with others before lowering the safety bar, fill every seat on the chair, if there is a line); and,
   (2) Off the hill, carry your skis on your shoulder; tips forward, tail up. Any other technique is likely to hit someone else in the head. ↩︎
8. With or without an envelope. ↩︎
9. Most of these are on display at the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in ’s-Hertogenbosch NL, which hosts a quasi-permanent mail art exhibition. ↩︎
10. To state the obvious. ↩︎
11. I mean the actual, physical, artwork, not the copyright or intellectual property rights (to copy or redistribute). ↩︎
12. “Someone” is Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, who has done a lot more travelling than you or me. ↩︎